Enhanced turbulent mixing near the seafloor is thought to be a crucial element of the overturning circulation of the abyssal ocean, and 1D dynamics have been a powerful tool for understanding the dynamical response to such mixing over a sloping bottom.
Antarctic Bottom Water fills the abyss of the Atlantic and Pacific basins [1]}, [2]}.
For these dense waters to return to the surface, they must cross isopycnals and thus require diapycnal mixing [3]}, [4]}, [5]}.
Observations have revealed that this diapycnal mixing is strongly enhanced over rough topography [6]}, [7]}, [8]}, where tidal and geostrophic currents produce a field of vigorous internal waves that break and produce small-scale turbulence [9]}, [10]}.
Our understanding of how the ocean responds to this mixing, both locally and globally, has been shaped by 1D theory for a stratified, rotating fluid overlying a sloping, insulated seafloor [11]}, [12]}, [13]}, [14]}.
This theory (and the thinking it inspires), suggests that bottom-intensified mixing spins up diabatic upslope flow in a thin bottom boundary layer and diabatic downslope flow in a stratified mixing layer above [15]}, [16]}, [17]}, [18]}, [19]}.
Variations in these locally produced flows give rise to exchange with the interior and produce a basin-scale circulation in the abyss [20]}, [21]}, [22]}, [23]}, [24]}, [25]}.
